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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726580">The Riddles on Lanterns</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven'>MistyBeethoven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>"Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You with a Story or a Picture" [106]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Extreme Pursuit (2013), Man of Tai Chi (2013)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>BBW, Celebrations, Childhood, Chinese Lantern Festival, Christian Character, Established Relationship, F/M, Flashbacks, Hope, Hugging, Identity, Introspection, Kissing, Love, Love Stories, Overweight, POV Third Person, Qipaos, Rough Sex, Schizoid Personality Disorder, Sex From Behind, Spanking, Support, lantern festival, lanterns, new life</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:59:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,532</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29726580</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The man once known as Donaka Mark struggles with both his past and new life as he honors the Chinese Lantern Festival with his lover: the woman he once held hostage.</p><p>*Posted this accidentally earlier before it was done! All fixed now.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Donaka Mark/Me</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>"Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You with a Story or a Picture" [106]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Riddles on Lanterns</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I didn't plan this...just saw the Google doodle again and had to do an entry. I hope it is okay.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>"Would you choose any of them?"</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The little child studied the women around him and considered the question.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He was a cold boy, detatched and too often filled with rage so that any of the caregivers he was intrusted to soon grew frightened of him and fled into the night. This fresh one would too in time, but tonight they were new and it was the Lantern Festival so their spirits were high.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Females his own age were something new to the child too. Often they were kept away, hidden in secret and protected. As far as the boy was concerned, they could have remained in such a state.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>He fixed the caretaker with a sour frown and would not even bother answering the question. While riddles scribbled on lanterns begged to be answered, the boy thought the one offered now was unworthy of an answer.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>* * *</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Years later, in the approaching of adulthood and its specific, intrusive yearnings, the question had been asked once again on the night of the Lantern Festival.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The young man had studied them, and while his eyes and body desired quite a few, he held no real interest in solely one. Best to try them each in turn and then discard them also, just like the lanterns themselves.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Each woman had turned out to be an ordinary lantern to him, after all. In the beginning they were bright and filled with both light and question. They were the riddles themselves. However, to spend enough time with them, the riddle was easily solved and they soon lost the power the mystery had painted them with. Used now, unfit for marriage and soon to be scorned if the truth were to be discovered, he left them to their fate without caring, seeing no trouble if they were carried by the wind to some other place where there fall was not known or destroyed in a fire and thus purified.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The seed of his cruelty had started soon enough.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>When it had begun, he could not know...</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>The young man only wanted it to go on forever and consume or destroy all it touched.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And wanting such a thing, it was another reason he decided it was best not to choose a mate all.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>* * *</p><p> </p><p>There were certain things that were not easily outgrown once you developed the taste for them, the man thought.</p><p> </p><p>One of these was that he enjoyed dressing his lover.</p><p> </p><p>Having sent for a qipao of the finest silk, the man had surprised Erin with it. She had looked at the shimmering fabric moving almost like liquid over the palm of his hand, a crimson wave, and her eyes had widened in appreciation and want. He had given it to her then, almost immediately stripping her of the expensive dress suit he had purchased for her, as well, because he had an eye for what suited her. There was no time for her to refuse, not that she would have anyway. His hands were too fast on her, taking off the clothing with his unusual agility and turning her plump and curved body with his uncommon strength. She turned to liquid too in his touch then, accommodating his wishes. Stripped down to her red lace panties and bra, Donaka allowed himself to hold her from behind, giving a few squeezes to her ample breasts and some tugs to her inverted nipples, coaxing them out, despite the fabric separating skin to flesh.</p><p> </p><p>His hand dipping into the scarlet lace, he soon discovered that she was wet from his undressing of her and the liberties his hands had made on her body throughout the performance.</p><p> </p><p>From her time as his captive, Erin had been conditioned to respond to his touch; her years of chasteness had helped make her all the more succeptible to it, even as she refused to give in at the start.</p><p> </p><p>Now she was no longer as reluctant, having surrendered one blessed day.</p><p> </p><p>Before slipping the qipao over her, Donaka had slipped the underwear down and quickly taken her. She had already been bending over in anticipation while he had been forcing her head down simultaneously. They knew each other so well: what they needed to give and what they wanted to take. His cock had slid into her with the greatest of ease, but the act itself was more rough around the edges. He thrusted into her with little mercy and she accepted the brutality of his lovemaking as readily as her cunt had welcomed his erection.</p><p> </p><p>Erin's walls were perfectly warm around him, her buttocks full and reciprocating the violence of his movement, bumping into him wonderfully. He pushed her into a climax and she pulled him into his own, until they were both released and spent. Pulling her back up by her long and lovely hair, Erin fell against his chest and he gently turned her face to his. Their lips met before he began her redressing but not before he stared into her eyes and thought:</p><p> </p><p>"<em>You</em>; I <em>choose</em> you."</p><p> </p><p>* * *</p><p> </p><p>She looked lovely in the dress and it was amazing how her confidence in her plump body had bloomed within months. Inside of the prison he had made for her within the office building, wearing nothing more in front of him then some expensive and skimpy lingerie or nothing at all, she had let go of her fear that she could never be viewed as desirable and sexual. He had taught her how much he enjoyed her fullness, the hills of her body, the folds, nubs and holes.</p><p> </p><p>But while she had blossomed in her sensuality, Erin seemed to still hold on to the almost childlike shyness she had structured and strengthened for most of her life before him. Could he ever free her from it, the man wondered? Would he want to when her innocence brushed up against his lack of it like his penis so often caressed some inner part of her.</p><p> </p><p>Life was defined by its darkness and its light, by the black and the white, like the swirls on the wall he had often meditated before. Art could not be wrought without light meeting dark as well. Anything created of real interest possessed such extremes.</p><p> </p><p>Potentially that was what had always fascinated and repelled him to purity.</p><p> </p><p>Her childlike character suited the day of the Lantern Festival and with amusement he further set out to make their first shared special.</p><p> </p><p>"Here," he said, fetching for them each one of the specially made lanterns he had also ordered months ago.</p><p> </p><p>Her green-gray eyes sparkled as she held hers and turned it about delicately in her hands.</p><p> </p><p>"In China, a riddle is usually inscribed on each," the man stated. "Children and adults alike have fun searching for the answer. When it is believed to have been found, it is presented to a group. They then reward the guesser...that is <em>if</em> they are right."</p><p> </p><p>Erin looked at the red lantern in her hand, colored to match her dress, for a second, knowing what was already painted on it but stealing another glance at it just to be certain. "It's my name," she stated.</p><p> </p><p>The man recalled instantly the feeling of lying half dead on the slab in the Hong Kong morgue and the woman moving up and down on his cold body, returning to him the life he had secreted away inside of her. The feeling of her moist opening on him, her legs straddlig his hips as she thrusted and moved on his hardening phallus, desperate to bring him back to life and meanwhile reaping the pleasure of the act all the while. His cock was where he had felt the life returning first, hot and buzzing a feeling which had grown and spread as she had enveloped him with her warm and living cunt. Soon life had enveloped him also, what had been placed within her returning until life had coursed through him for the umpteenth and unnatural time.</p><p> </p><p>As eyes which had seen nothing had grown accustomed to witness her face in concentrated contorted in ecstasy above him, his hand had shot out with the aim to kill her, completeing the spell and returning to him the chance of immortality for yet another time in centuries.</p><p> </p><p>However, in her eyes he had seen only herself now and not himself and could no longer hurt her in a way that was not desired by her as well. His grip had loosened as had his chancd at living forever and for once the boy had finally made his choice to love another human being.</p><p> </p><p>The dragon could not devour the lamb.</p><p> </p><p>"Yes," Donaka said, reaching out to touch her face.</p><p> </p><p>She was, in truth, the greatest riddle he had ever encountered.</p><p> </p><p>Or, at least, his feelings for her were.</p><p> </p><p>* * *</p><p> </p><p>On top of their skyrise penthouse in New York, one in a string of sanctuaries they had incase Suen Jing Si ever found out what had truly happened back in Hong Kong, they walked to the edge of the roof. This area too he had had decorated for her. Throughout his life, the lanterns of his celebrations had been the best money could buy, enough to shame those whom looked upon them. </p><p> </p><p>They were not the simple lanterns now held in Erin and his' hands.</p><p> </p><p>She had read his own by now too, seeing that the riddle contained on it was his own name: the new one she had given to him.</p><p> </p><p>She did not remark on the fact to him but had turned her eyes on him with much thought and the empathy that was weaved into her soul.</p><p> </p><p>The name, this identity, was another riddle he was struggling to solve. Who was the man he had become when he had joined his life to hers? There were two fears in his life which had plagued him since youth: the fear of being abandoned and the fear of being enslaved.</p><p> </p><p>They were two contradictions and yet they existed within him. The first had become easily solved, a fear created by a mother's early neglect and her leaving. The boy had learned not to care for anyone. So when the caregiver had asked him to choose there had been <em>no</em> choice to make.</p><p> </p><p>The other fear had taken precedence then; he wished to belong to no one: to be himself <em>alone</em> in all that the concept entailed.</p><p> </p><p>Making one mistake he had trapped himself in the most damning way.</p><p> </p><p>He had made an experiment out of the wrong woman.</p><p> </p><p>Erin did not wish to enslave him. She was too gentle and to open for that. But had he placed the shackles on himself and would having caved into the last fear resurrect the first?</p><p> </p><p>Would the woman he love abandon him one day?</p><p> </p><p>That answer was simple.</p><p> </p><p>Yes.</p><p> </p><p>Death had been invited into his life now and it could only mean his separation from her eventually. One would die before the other. And if by chance they met their fate in a car crash or some other joined cause, she would surely go to heaven, if there was one, while all he could do was finally pay for his sins by burning in some hell he would fall weighted into.</p><p> </p><p>No matter what name he was given, the sins would always remain too heavy.</p><p> </p><p>Damning himself might have been a good enough cause to live long enough to meet her. Now though he was afraid he could not go where she was bound to when death finally came. And the man had soon found that he was as possessively jealous of her soul as he was her body.</p><p> </p><p>These were the shackles he had placed around his feet in the losing his freedom; the chains in the surrender of his identity: another fear come true.</p><p> </p><p>"In the releasing of the lantern, we let go of our old self for something <em>new</em>," he told her, staring at the kanji inscribed on the object in his hand.</p><p> </p><p>Erin studied his face. He could feel her eyes on him, seeping in through his pores, another invasion just as what she had done with his life, his soul. Then she teasingly clapped his ass and said mischievously, "And here, I thought we did that in the airplane's washroom."</p><p> </p><p>He turned to see her staring at him like a bad and naughty little girl and he dropped the lantern in his hand in order to grab her and spank her, all the while kissing her in his want and need. She gave him her love and a coo, her own lantern up against his back.</p><p> </p><p>He thought of her name resting there and knew that that was where he should have kept her if he wished to be wise and safe.</p><p> </p><p>Finished her punishment, he held her tightly, grateful she was before him.</p><p> </p><p>"I love you," he whispered into her ear, his voice deep and rough.</p><p> </p><p>"And you alone have my heart," she replied, nuzzling her head into his neck after biting his ear lovingly.</p><p> </p><p>* * *</p><p> </p><p>He held her from behind, her full, silk clad ass pressed into his crotch pleasantly, as she prepared to set her lantern free into the night sky. It was the first time she had ever done something like this, just like he had been the first to ever enter her. There was the flash of pride again, possession and love. "Release it," he commanded her, and she felt like both lover and child within his embrace as she acquiesced.</p><p> </p><p>She cried out in happiness as the wind caught it and took it away from them. The man fought a brief surge of jealousy over it too now, flying to heaven and so far away from him.</p><p> </p><p>"You now," she said, slipping out of his arms to watch.</p><p> </p><p>It was as he feared. His soul was too heavy with sin to join her; the lantern bearing his name was sinking to the city street below, where no doubt a car would soon hit it and end its misery.</p><p> </p><p>The riddle of whom he was to become was too heavy for him to solve, the weight of it casting him earlier into hell.</p><p> </p><p>Then the man felt warm arms wrapping around his waist under the navy sky. And soon a whisper...a gentle night breeze.</p><p> </p><p>"Watch it go, Donaka Mark."</p><p> </p><p>His old name.</p><p> </p><p>The one associated with pain and destruction.</p><p> </p><p>She had resurrected it on a rooftop in New York, one so high she ran the risk of God overhearing it and knowing where His enemy had fled.</p><p> </p><p>Yet Erin, still wearing the Christian cross he had given her, showed no fear that her God would destroy their peace. She only held him tighter, daring to say it once again in loving confirmation.</p><p> </p><p>She loved him for whom he <em>had</em> been as much as whom he was struggling to become.</p><p> </p><p>Suddenly the lantern bearing the name she had given him no longer seemed to be struggling in the air. It caught the breeze and became stronger, eventually gaining on its soulmate's speed until the two lanterns floated off into the unknown together.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Dear Keanu;</p><p>I think this turned out okay...</p><p>I think there's a nice exploration going on here of Donaka's fear that his identity would be lost in his struggle to become someone else in a relationship. But then the affirmation at the end that that was who Erin (I) loved him as: himself. She didn't want him to lose himself. She wanted him to be the man she had fallen in love with not anybody else.</p><p>Did that come across? I hope so. </p><p>Much love,<br/>Erin,<br/>XO XO<br/>:D &lt;3</p></blockquote></div></div>
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